Chasing the Triple Crown

— -- It hangs in a corner of memory like one of those old English racing scenes whose paint has begun to crack -- an heirloom of the mind now seen in fading colors, with that sunlit horse and rider in the center of it, plunging through the lights and shadows of the late June afternoon. Through the gauzy vapors of heat that hung like veils on the rows of trees along the backstretch fence. Beyond the flags fluttering above the infield lake. Through the ancient gates of history -- to a place where no race horse had ever been or may ever pass again.

Two silhouettes, in solitary flight.

Of all the memories that Secretariat left behind, strewn for me along a road that ran from Saratoga to Louisville, from Baltimore to New York, none remains more vivid than the sight of that gracefully moving horse as he swept toward the far turn in the '73 Belmont Stakes. For it was there -- as he pulled away from Sham and widened his lead at once to two lengths then quickly to three ... four ... five ... six ... seven -- the scene grew surreal, almost mystical, with the colt galloping as if from the pages of a storybook, a creature out of myth. Instinctively, I glanced at the infield Teletimer and saw the story gathering in that ominous cloud of numbers hovering in the air: three quarters of a mile in 1:09 4/5s seconds, the fastest three-quarter mile split in Belmont history, and the mile in a blistering 1:34 1/5! This mile clocking was faster, by almost a full second, than the swiftest older racehorse on the grounds, Tentam, had needed to win the fabled Metropolitan Mile at Belmont a week earlier. And Secretariat still had 880 yards to run.

The colt was racing to become the ninth Triple Crown winner in history, the first since Citation swept the 1¼-mile Kentucky Derby, the 1 3/16-mile Preakness and the Belmont Stakes in 1948, and the instant I saw those splits -- the horse was sprinting through the Belmont's mile and a half -- I figured right there that all was lost. Figured that he'd be consumed by the fires of his own sizzling pace, that he'd thrown himself on the flaming pyre just like his own father, Bold Ruler, had done in 1957, when he set a fiery pace in Gallant Man's record-breaking Belmont, only to grow so weary in the final eighth that he staggered home third, beaten by 12 lengths. Now I could see it all happening again, like father, like son, and I dropped my head and cursed his jockey, Ron Turcotte:

You idiot! What do you think you're doing? You're going tooooo damn fast!

What happened next defied all known precedents in the annals of American racing, blurring all reason as it repainted history -- a 50-second blur in time that left the sport with a new standard against which all other performances might be measured. Secretariat never dropped a beat as he raced around that turn, widening his lead to 10 lengths ... 12 ... 14 ... 18 ... now 20 as he rushed past the quarter pole in 1:59 flat, faster than his record-smashing Kentucky Derby run five weeks before.

As Sham drifted back to last, Secretariat kept pouring it on, opening 25 lengths at the eighth pole and 28 lengths by the time he was 100 yards from the wire. Here Turcotte glanced to his left, saw the Teletimer blinking its frantic message: 2:19 ... 2:20. In disbelief, Turcotte did a double take ... 2:21! Gallant Man's daunting mark was 2:26 3/5s. For the first time that day, Turcotte asked the colt to run, pushing on him with his hands, scrubbing on his neck: 2:22! The crowd grew deafening. Twenty yards from the wire he was 30 in front. Turcotte pushed again: 2:23 ...

Eighty thousand people leaned forward. The colt swept past the wire 31 lengths in front. The electric timer froze, and thousands gasped: 2:24 seconds flat! A new Belmont record by almost three seconds, and a new world record on the dirt.

Secretariat's victory, widely perceived as the finest performance ever by a thoroughbred, crowned what became the Golden Age of racing in America -- the inimitable decade of the 1970s, a span that witnessed two more Triple Crown winners, Seattle Slew in 1977 and Affirmed in 1978, and nearly a fourth in 1979, when Spectacular Bid, looking like a shoo-in to sweep the Triple, was sent chasing cheap speed by his inexperienced rider, Ron Franklin. At the top of the lane, he was in front by three lengths, but wilted like a Derby rose to finish third.

This was the decade that saw the rise and fall of Ruffian, the most brilliant female racehorse I have ever seen; the dominating presence of Forego, America's four-time Horse of the Year; and the Affirmed-Alydar rivalry, the most compelling in Triple Crown history, with Alydar finishing second in all three and losing the last, the Belmont, by the final thrust of Affirmed's head.

I began covering thoroughbred racing for Long Island's Newsday in the spring of '72. Tossing off the Bid's loss as an anomaly, I figured that three Triple Crown winners per decade was the new norm, that the Golden Age had come and would not end, that what we were witnessing was the full flowering of the modern American thoroughbred -- a phenomenon that grew out of American breeders aggressively fishing the richer gene pools of Europe before and after World War II. Six European stallions imported to America from 1920 to the late 1940s -- Sunreigh, St. Germans, Sir Gallahad III, Blenheim II, Bull Dog and Nasrullah -- all purchased by Americans to infuse new blood into old domestic lines, led to a whole new set of genetic recipes that produced nine of the last 10 Triple Crown winners and a bevy of other champions, from Ruffian to Forego to Foolish Pleasure.

Not incidentally, this year's Triple Crown contender, California Chrome, has a sire line that traces back to Nasrullah through Seattle Slew and Bold Ruler, Nasrullah's most prepotent son. Nasrullah, in particular, complemented American mares so well that he created the finest blend of unrelated flavors since ham first met eggs.